In telecommunication switching systems, it is well known to use a messaging system such as a voice mail system to store messages for telephones attached to the telecommunication switching system. When a call is placed to an attached telephone set which is not answered, the telecommunication switching system transfers the call to the voice mail system. Upon transferring the call to the voice mail system, the telecommunication system identifies the called telephone set to the voice mail system. The voice mail system prompts the caller to leave a message and then, records that message upon the caller speaking the message. U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,959 discloses a system that when a message is left in the voice mail system, the voice mail system signals the telecommunication switching system, and the telecommunication switching system activates a message waiting indicator on the called telephone set. When the user of the called telephone set retrieves the message from the voice mail system, the voice mail system sends another message to the telecommunication switching system which resets the messaging waiting indicator on the telephone set. These operations have proven invaluable to users of telephone systems since a user can determine by glancing at their telephone set if there is a message waiting for them on the messaging system. In addition, the invention of U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,959 has been applied to other messaging systems than just voice mail systems.
Within the telecommunication industry, it has become common for users to have telephone sets wired to a telecommunication system and to have a wireless set which is connected via a wireless switching system to the telecommunication switching system. User has both a wired and wireless set with each set having a different telephone number. When a message is left on a voice mail system, the voice mail system causes the telecommunication system to set the message waiting indicator on the called telephone set but is incapable of setting an indication on the user's wireless set. Since the purpose of having both a wired telephone set and a wireless set is to allow a user to maintain constant communication via the telecommunication system, the inability to indicate on the wireless set that a message is waiting is a serious deficiency. Within the prior art, users have attempted to overcome this deficiency by utilizing a feature in voice mail systems called outbound calling. The outbound calling feature allows a user to designate a telephone number which will be called by the voice mail system every fixed time period if a message is waiting for the user in the voice mail system. Users have designated pagers as the number to be called for the outbound calling or have designated the telephone number of the wireless set. The problem with designating a pager as the device to be called by the outbound calling is that it requires a user to carry both a wireless set and a pager. The problem with directing calls from the outbound feature to the wireless set are that the user may not wish to access the message and is bothered by the continuing ringing of the wireless set.